HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The conclusion of the Army’s inaugural Best Drone Warfighter Competition saw soldiers awarded in Best Operator, Best Innovation and Best Tactical Squad categories.
On hand to present awards to the winners, who were selected from more than 200 competitors during the Feb. 17-19 event, were Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Maj. Gen. Clair A. Gill, commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence.
Driscoll, who flew to the Huntsville, Alabama, ceremony after participating in Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland, spoke to Military Times about the significance of the event and how it will inform the future of drone warfare and the scaling of unmanned systems.
Scaling
In remarks shared ahead of the ceremony, Driscoll told Military Times that he hopes the Army will be in position to buy one million drones within the next 18 to 24 months.
“A lot of what we’ve been spending the last year doing is reorienting a lot of our systems so that a drone is not thought of as a piece of equipment that a soldier will have to sign out of an arms room and return, but more like an ammunition or a round that you take to a range,” he said.
Asked about his near-term goals for scaling drone production, Driscoll said the Army is currently focusing on assessing new drone technology for design and potential use.
“I think our near-term goals are more qualitative,” he said. “We as an Army have got to figure out how to reset how we think about purchasing things like drones, how we think about training on things like drones and how we think about repairing them on the edge.”
Driscoll maintained that there is no time to waste when it comes to building drones and integrating them throughout the force.
The existing ability of adversarial nations to build and deploy unmanned systems makes that evolution paramount, he said.
“We know if we look at our threats around the world, like in China or other nations that are producing 5 million to 15 million drones, we are short of that in both our commercial and military sector,” he said. “So, we need to get to a place where we can scale quickly to match them.”
A drone marketplace
Driscoll and Gill told Military Times that the Army is planning to launch a drone marketplace next month, which will allow soldiers to market and sell drone innovations throughout the service alongside private industry.
Products will be rated and reviewed, with increased competition expected to drive prices down.
“We’re going to allow the consumers — that’s our soldiers and our units — to rate the equipment that’s being sold there,” Gill said. “It’s going to allow for a natural free market economy to drive the best product.”
Driscoll said that the combined efforts of soldiers and private industry, in addition to the efforts of lawmakers, will help the Army meet its goals to increase manufacturing.
“I think the urgency is there,” Driscoll said. “If you talk to members of Congress, whether it’s a defense prime or a startup, everyone knows we have to solve this problem. If you go speak to any of these soldiers out here, the talent and the innovation is there.”
The Army secretary added that the military’s sense of urgency has ramped up due to the rapid surge of threats unmanned systems pose to national security.
“What keeps me up at night is just the sheer magnitude of the problem that is required and the concept of these layered defenses,” Driscoll said.
“The biggest thing that we in the United States Army and as federal officials and Americans face, the biggest dilemma, is how broad of the threat exists and how you layer in solutions that can take into account how much territory is required to be defended.”
The winners
Driscoll and Gill presented award plaques to the winning soldiers, including a team assigned to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment that took home the prize for Best Tactical Squad.
Meanwhile, 1st Sgt. Javon Purchner earned the title of Best Operator for his drone racing skills, and the Army National Guard’s 28th Infantry Division clinched the award for Best Innovation for a drone-recovering UAS called Project R.E.D.
Driscoll thanked the competitors for exploring how to use drones “offensively, just as any threat against us might,” while drawing from his recent peace talk experiences in the days leading up to the event.
“We started the day in Geneva, and yesterday we spent a lot of time and the day before with the Ukrainians and the Russians,” he said. “One of the things when you spend time with them — beyond the peace talk portion — is them showing you just the violent videos of the drones they’re using, slaughtering the soldiers on the other side. … The videos are horrifying.
“The biggest thing I would convey from having spent a lot of time with the Ukrainians, the Russians, the Israelis, is drones are changing everything. They don’t think of them as an aviation asset. They don’t think of it as something only infantry have to deal with.”
Driscoll stressed that U.S. soldiers are helping mitigate such threats by training tactically with emerging technology.
“We desperately need you to go back to your formations, tell them what we got right,” he said. “Just as importantly tell them what we got wrong.”
Zita Ballinger Fletcher previously served as editor of Military History Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and as the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in military history.
